The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor

By Mark Seal

(Viking; 323 pages; $26.95)

"There's a sucker born every minute," P.T. Barnum once quipped. While the flamboyant showman smirked at dupes among the unwashed masses, he overlooked the gullibility of the allegedly best and brightest, especially when a con man appears in the guise of an aristocrat.

The champion bluffer in Mark Seal's "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit" first christened himself Chris Gerhart, then Christopher Mountbatten Chichester, then Christopher Crowe. Next he morphed into American royalty, as James Frederick Mills Clark Rockefeller. Finally, fleeing toward anonymity, he became Chip Smith.

In reality, he was Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, once an eccentric German youth who yearned to rise above his humble Bavarian roots and remake himself in the United States. Arriving in Connecticut as a 17-year-old high school student in 1978, he absorbed American culture from TV and movies and veered between ingratiating charm and insufferable arrogance. At college, in Wisconsin, he persuaded a woman to marry him so he could remain in the country, then promptly took off for Southern California's promised land.

The upscale enclave of San Marino proved an ideal breeding ground for his make-believe. As Chichester, a poor relation to English aristocrats, he affected an English accent and donned the preppy uniform he would wear thereafter - blue blazer, khaki pants and boat shoes without socks. An Episcopal church served as entrée to elderly matrons who would befriend, feed and fund him. One, Didi Sohus, rented a guest house to him. Years later, after Chichester was long gone, the skeleton of Sohus' son John would be discovered buried in her backyard, with the police calling her renter their primary "person of interest."

Here, and elsewhere, Gerhartsreiter employed equal amounts of bonhomie and intelligence in playing his roles. Never mind that he didn't seem to have a job, that he drove an old Plymouth, that his clothes seemed to need dry cleaning. He was an amazingly quick study, knowledgeable about movies, art, computers and finance.

Back in Connecticut, he talked himself into jobs with prominent investment firms (using the Social Security number of David Berkowitz, New York's "Son of Sam" serial murderer!). In New York, as Clark Rockefeller, the city's august St. Thomas Episcopal Church connected him to Sandra Boss.

To Boss, Rockefeller claimed to be a Yale grad who advised Third World countries on debt reduction. His parents had allegedly been killed in an auto accident. Boss, a whip-smart management consultant out of Stanford and Harvard Business School, never saw any records of income in his name and never met any Rockefeller relatives, yet she never questioned his bona fides until well after they had married and had a child together. In fact, he was living on her money alone.

Given a story so bizarre, it's best for the teller to stay out of the way. Alas, Seal, who first chronicled it for Vanity Fair, injects himself into the action at every turn. To his credit, though, he's woven nearly 200 interviews, plus court transcripts and official documents, into a compulsively readable narrative. This is the stuff of breathtaking fiction, as a man transmutes himself, Zelig-like, into one persona after another.

"You are your last great story, your most recent trenchant analysis, the witticism you let float in the air," commented one astonished admirer of Rockefeller's perpetual re-invention.

All these assets, allied to that awe-inspiring surname, granted him memberships to such upper-crust precincts as New York's Lotos Club and Boston's Algonquin Club. So convincing was his collection of fake modern paintings that high-powered art dealers were fooled.

After moving to the rural obscurity of Cornish, N.H., however, Rockefeller's hauteur infuriated locals, and his tall tales made them doubt his authenticity. His only solace, while Boss toiled away in Boston, was as primary caretaker of his daughter, Reigh. Later, after moving to that city's pricey Beacon Hill, he was known as "Mr. Mom," showing off the precocious preschooler who could not only read but identify paintings at the Museum of Fine Art.

The book begins and ends with a kidnapping in 2007, as a now divorced Clark speeds off with Reigh, apparently the only person he ever loved. Caught and tried, he's now serving time in prison. The jury refused to be conned by his insanity plea.

Since Seal was unable to interview Gerhartsreiter, his subject remains a mystery. We can only guess what drove him. And we suspect that he's not only an impostor but a killer. Still, the story is as astounding as any you'll ever read, and Seal tells it with panache.